Liverpool have struck a verbal agreement with Belgian club KRC Genk to sign 18-year-old goalkeeper Lucca Brughmans in a deal worth €35m, roughly £30m. Fabrizio Romano broke the news and confirmed the agreement with his customary “here we go” sign-off, indicating the transfer is essentially done at that level. Liverpool Transfer News of this kind rarely surfaces without the deal being very close to completion.
Liverpool Transfer News: Liverpool agree €35m deal for Genk teenage goalkeeper Lucca Brughmans
Sacha Tavolieri, who was first to report Liverpool’s interest, also confirmed that a medical has already been approved, with formal contract steps expected to follow. Brughmans is 2 metres tall, a towering 6’7″, and currently captains the Belgium U19 national side. He is not joining immediately. The plan puts him at Anfield in summer 2027, with a loan back to Genk for the 2026/27 campaign. There is one exception to that timetable, though: if Liverpool offload Giorgi Mamardashvili to Nottingham Forest before the deadline, Brughmans could arrive sooner.
Is this really the right call for Liverpool?
Let’s be direct. Paying £30 million for a teenager with fewer than 20 senior professional appearances is an enormous, high-risk investment, and the reasoning behind it doesn’t hold up cleanly under scrutiny. Brughmans played 11 senior matches, 1,020 minutes, for Genk in the Belgian Pro League during the 2025/26 season, supplementing that with 32 appearances for Jong Genk. That is a dangerously thin body of evidence on which to stake a chunk of a summer transfer budget.
The physical attributes are legitimate. At 6’7″, he commands crosses well. His high claim success rate sits at 83%, and he completes roughly 65% of his long balls accurately. Those numbers, for an 18-year-old, are encouraging. But Brughmans’s active sweeper rate clocks in at a modest 20%, and his save percentage fluctuates between 40 and 50% in the Jupiler Pro League. That’s not a Premier League-ready goalkeeper.
What makes this move harder to justify is the context surrounding it. Liverpool signed Mamardashvili from Valencia for £29m just a year prior, under a nearly identical loan-back structure. The Georgian then conceded 34 goals in 20 Premier League appearances. Now Liverpool are reportedly moving him on to Nottingham Forest, only to immediately spend the same money on another unproven teenager. That pattern points to a recruitment strategy that isn’t functioning correctly.
Alisson Becker enters the final year of his contract. Vitezslav Jaros is still recovering from a significant knee injury. Liverpool Transfer News in the goalkeeping department has been consistently reactive, and this latest deal does nothing to change that perception. Andoni Iraola’s pressing system demands a sweeper-keeper who is quick off his line and precise with the ball at his feet, and on current metrics, Brughmans simply doesn’t meet that profile yet.
Read: Liverpool set to complete more 6 transfer deals before deadline day after Barcola agreement
The talent is there. It would be foolish to deny it. But £30m for 15 senior games places an unfair burden on a boy who, genuinely, still needs to develop the fundamentals before anchoring a title-chasing backline.
